One Good Wand Read online

  Contents

  Title

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Epilogue

  Author's Notes

  One Good Wand

  The Reluctant Godmother

  Book 1

  By Grace McGuiness

  Copyright © 2016 by Grace McGuiness

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, except by an authorized retailer or by obtaining written permission from the author.

  Book cover designed by Deranged Doctor Design http://www.derangeddoctordesign.com/

  Proofreading by Kathryn St. John-Shin

  This book is dedicated to

  all the poor souls

  in a dumpy dinghy

  just like mine,

  with enough holes

  to keep us

  too busy to improve,

  but not enough

  to sink us.

  Paddle on, dear friends,

  and know you’re not alone!

  Chapter 1

  For the third time that month, a kid puked rainbow sprinkles all over my shoes.

  Inwardly, I swore. Loudly. Outwardly, I smiled at the kid’s mom and reassured her that, “No, really, it’s okay, Lorie. They’re cheap canvas. They wash.” Never mind that they were my only pair of shoes without holes in them. Never mind that the cash I was earning by being there would barely cover a new pair. The shoes would wash out; forget the smell and move along home, people. And by ‘people,’ I meant me. But then, moving along wasn’t really my thing.

  Lorie took my reassurance with only half an ear, the majority of her attention focused on her three-year-old. “What did Mommy tell you about eating all that cake and then riding the pony?” She fussed and dabbed and sort of half-armed a hug from the golden-haired little girl.

  Wiping vomit from a Dora the Explorer jumper was hardly a situation I would have expected from my high school friend. Or friends, plural. Yet here they all were, prettily plumped in various stages of baby number two and still looking fabulous and successful. Lorie, ‘50s glam and the perfect homemaker in a sundress and adorable pink flats. Tall, lanky Amber with her full-ride basketball scholarship proudly on display on the toddler with the crew cut and UCLA tee. He was currently wrestling a kid in a Bronco’s jersey, who belonged to Kris, the cheerleader married to the NFL player. The party she had thrown for her twins would have outmanned, out-delicioused, and outspent every party I had ever attended all lumped together and doubled. Their cake had been featured in a national housekeeping magazine, thanks to a picture Kris had snapped with her smartphone.

  That one hurt the worst. Even more than finding out my only other childless school friend was an up-and-comer for a Fortune 100 company. That was an awkward conversation:

  “Hey, Marie! You look amazing, as always.”

  “Oh, well, it all comes with the territory when you’re a managing partner for a global company producing flying cars and kittens that sparkle in the sunlight. Our robots are going to take over the world, starting with our own personalities. But never mind me, Tessa. How are you?”

  “Me? I’m a jobless divorcee with so much student debt I will be paying installments until I die. Turns out the degree all that money and interest got me isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on, post-economic-downturn. And, oh yeah, my bank account is so empty, I had to move in with my mom and her new husband. So I’m pretty much a broke, jobless, dateless, awkward high schooler again. Thanks so much for asking!”

  Or maybe that’s just the way it felt. I wasn’t exactly winning any objectivity contests here.

  I excused myself to wash the vomit from my shoes with the hose on the side of the house. Once they were clear, I stuffed my socks in my camera bag and put the shoes back on all wet and clammy. Unpleasant, but if I hadn’t cared as a kid, I figured I could cope for the next two hours. Frick. I checked my watch. Yep, it really was two hours.

  “Tessa, there you are!” Ally called, flagging me down. “Everything okay?”

  “Just switching out lenses,” I lied. “What’s up?”

  Ally switched her one-year-old to the other hip. The big-eyed little girl was gnawing on her brother’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle while staring at me. Poor Donatello…but at least the kid had good taste. “I was just talking to some of the girls about your photos and how beautiful they are. Do you have business cards or a website or something?”

  That familiar sinking sensation I had come to think of as my little stomach gremlin - like a shoulder angel, only in my belly and an ugly little beast - settled in for a long stay. “Not currently. I scrapped it all with the move and…everything.” I didn’t want to admit that I had given up on my photography business long before my divorce was filed.

  “Oh, right.” Ally gave me that pretty smile that hid her pity almost completely…but not quite. “So, should I give them your number or…?”

  Rather than heaving a sigh of defeat like I wanted to, I smiled brightly and nodded. “That’d be great, Al, thanks. And thanks for asking me to shoot today. It’s a great party, and I got some really great shots of Carter.” One ‘great’ shy of complete overcompensation. Whew.

  “Speaking of which, if you come inside for a minute I’ll get you, um, you know.”

  “Sure. Sounds great.” And there I went, that last ‘great’ that affirmed my awkwardness and brainlessness pushing me off the cliff of no-return. I saw the grimace Ally tried to hide. I wasn’t sure why she bothered; we had been best friends all through high school. We’d seen each other in much worse positions than this. Then again, it’s not like I was winning any openness competitions here.

  Ally led the way into her perfect suburban house with its white tile floors and pretty gingham accents. She had the kind of soft country taste that I loved growing up. Now, I found it abysmally charming. Every little frill, every bit of lace and repurposed wood-plank-that’s-now-a-picture-frame made me want to die a little. And not in that “couldn’t you just die?” sort of way.

  “So, how’s the Etsy shop doing?” I asked, trying to make conversation with the woman I’d seen half-naked and gyrating on a poker table with a pair of male strippers on her twenty-first birthday.

  Ally beamed over her shoulder. “Oh, it’s so amazing! I love that I get to do all these little projects and make a little of my own money. Plus, it’s fun, and it keeps me sane when I haven’t seen another adult for two weeks.” As if she had just noticed her daughter’s teething choice, she burst out, “Oh, Daisy! That’s Carter’s favorite.” She pulled the turtle away and tucked it neatly into a drawer in a cabinet that used to be a shipping pallet. “Oh well. I’m sure with all his new toys he won’t even notice.” The baby began to cry, prompting Ally to go through the dance of motherhood to calm her, patting and shushing and rubbing her bac
k and bouncing her gently.

  The gremlin in my belly did a backflip even as I acknowledged a weak trickle of joy for my friend warming my insides. “Now that I’m back in town, we should get together more. Grab coffee. Or smoothies. Or…juice boxes, or whatever.”

  “We totally should,” she agreed as she one-handed her wallet from the kitschy purse hanging on a Bless This Home hat hook. “Justin is working weekends this month, but maybe next month?”

  “We could do weekdays. It’s not like I’m rolling in things to do.”

  “I guess that’s an option. It’s just…between lunch and naptime and running Carter from preschool to t-ball and then making dinner and getting her in bed…” She kissed the top of her daughter’s head. “It’s hard to find five seconds for me, you know?”

  “Sure,” I answered, even though I plainly had no way of understanding. “Any time, just gimme a call.” I tried to keep my voice light and even and not desperate. I desperately didn’t want to sound desperate…

  “Well, here you go. Thanks again. So much. Knowing you’re covering pictures…it’s one less thing for me to worry about.” She handed me a crisp fifty.

  My stomach gremlin pulled off a perfect ten belly flop. I shoved the bill in my pocket before I could say anything dumb. “Oh, hey. Thank you. It’s nice to be here. To help.” To be useful.

  “It’s nice to have you here,” she said, flat as one of the pancakes she no doubt made every Sunday morning. “Um, I’ve got the other moms. I’ll make sure to give them your number. I know a lot of them want prenatal pics. You do those, right?”

  I didn’t. “Yeah, of course.”

  “Good.” Ally smiled, and this time it looked sincere. “So, we’ll talk later, okay? Make sure you get a couple shots of Carter on the pony, and then one of each present he opens. My sister is writing my thank-you list, but you know her. I just wanted to make sure she felt included…” Her voice trailed off as we turned and she got a look at her pristine white tiles. Previously pristine, they now held a trail of pony poop in a heel shape that looked terribly familiar.

  “Oh, jeez. I’m so sorry, Al,” I stammered, picking up my feet to find the offender. “I just washed the stupid things after Lorie’s kid threw up on them. I can’t believe…I’ll clean it up. Paper towels in the kitchen?” I felt horrible. How had I managed to step in something in the literal twelve steps from the hose to the house?

  “Don’t worry about it. Carter does it all the time. I’ll just get Justin to deal with it. He’s probably off drinking beer with the other dads.” She flashed me a smile, but every other part of her face suggested I had just become a greater frustration than my camera was worth.

  I nodded awkwardly as I pulled off the offending shoe. “I’ll just go take pictures then, huh? Do work for you instead of making more.” I gave a little laugh, but I didn’t even convince myself.

  Two hours later, I parked my mom’s car in the garage still littered with old bicycles and broken lawnmowers. I rested my head on the steering wheel and breathed deeply. I’d managed not to ruin anything else and get out of the party with some smidgen of my dignity intact, but so much awkward small talk really did me in. Sleeping for a week sounded like a good, solid plan. And hey, for the first time in years, I could actually follow through on that.

  Grabbing my gear and the piece of cake I’d snagged on the way out, I steeled myself against the oncoming barrage and climbed out of the car.

  I hadn’t even closed the door when my mom leaned around the adjoining doorway and said, “Hi, honey! How was it?” She had dirt on her nose and a couple of dead leaves in her hair. Apparently, the backyard was as desperate for a remodel as I was for the tall plate of relaxing chocolate cake in my hand because she had been out there almost every day for three weeks.

  I peeled off my shoes and dropped them on the floor of the laundry room (where I would have preferred to burn them, but I might as well burn the money in my pocket). Then I padded from the cold tiles onto the kitchen’s warm wood floor. “Crappy. Literally.”

  “Oh, honey. What happened?” She ran her pianist’s fingers through my hair, the same black-brown her own had once been. Mom should have had six kids, as much as she doted on the two she had.

  “I don’t want to talk about it. Is there food? Tell me there’s food.” I could already tell there wasn’t. The kitchen smelled of Lysol and lavender and sparkled as if an army of scrubbing bubbles had scoured it clean. I set my cake on the counter just in time—Mom scooped me into a big hug and squeezed.

  “What do you feel like?” she asked, already full of bright-eyed eagerness. “I’ll make whatever you want.” She smelled like jasmine. The rich floral scent enveloped me just like her arms, doing its best to comfort me. But just like her marriage, it was too new for that. Not that I would have appreciated the memories brought up by her old perfume, but the difference left me feeling incompletely consoled.

  As it had since I first walked in the door a month ago with my whole world piled into a small moving truck in the driveway, my mom’s attempt to soothe me had the opposite effect. I didn’t want comfort, to be calmed and pampered and treated like glass. I wanted to rage, to vent, to sob like a baby robbed of her Ninja Turtle chew toy. But I couldn’t do that. Mom was technically still a newlywed, and I didn’t want to rain on her parade. How she could be happy with that man, I had no idea. I had never seen her so at peace, though, and that was worth its weight in gold.

  “I don’t really care,” I answered. “I just need something to cut the sugar once I gorge myself on…” The source of Mom’s peace was currently devouring my chocolate cake like he’d never seen cake before. In a white, deep-v-necked undershirt, his grey chest hair looking like a wolf pelt barely held in check, her new husband closed his eyes and groaned in chocolate-drenched rapture. His seriously receding hairline created an arrow that pointed to the broad schnoz that dominated his pitted face as if to draw attention to the hair growing in elsewhere. If I hadn’t been one hundred percent starving, I would have lost my appetite. Dismay whooshed through me but I was too tired to bother with it. “…the dead dreams of my childhood,” I finished, with all the melodrama I could muster. “Enjoy the cake, Bob.”

  Without waiting for my mother’s peacekeeping attempts, I escaped to my basement bedroom. I felt the now-familiar pang of sadness as I crossed that threshold. Gone were my movie posters, the awesome space mural Mom had spent so long painting for me half a lifetime ago. Even the corny Shoot for the stars! plaque Mom had nailed to the ceiling over my bed had been replaced. Now, it looked more like a room in a third-rate beach hotel complete with a terrible sand painting Bob had made for my mom on their honeymoon. When I’d asked to take it down, my mom had said, “Oh, but it goes so well with the decor!” And that had been that. I still took it down and hid it every night before I went to bed. Somehow, miraculously, it found its way back to the hook every afternoon.

  “I don’t want to get sand in awkward places, thanks,” I said to its suggestion, tugging it off the wall with disgust. I slid it beneath the ottoman in the corner setting my camera bag on the matching rattan chair.

  I glanced at my laptop as I dug comfy clothes from the wicker dresser. Weekends were supposed to be email-free days. Days I didn’t worry about the inevitable lack of reply from hiring managers or the jobs I wouldn’t get waiting for me to fill out applications. After a day spent surrounded by strangers who looked a lot like my old friends, the last thing I wanted to do was dink around social media. But a little vent…a teeny, tiny little thing, maybe on Twitter where nobody paid attention. That would be okay, right? Cathartic.

  I poised my fingers over the keys, ready to craft the perfect status update that would give voice to my frustration without actively letting anyone know anything personal about my miserable excuse for a life…or insulting my high school friends.

  Thirty-seven notifications? That had to be a mistake. Had my mom logged in?

  No. No…

  A few clicks, a lon
g, glassy-eyed read, and I discovered my last, worst fear had come true.

  It wasn’t a mistake, it was a joke. A great, big, cosmic joke. Yet somehow, also totally on par for the course of my life.

  Serabella Angelique, Hollywood’s indie darling, was set to star in a remake of Gone With the Wind opposite her real-life boyfriend and debut actor, Kyle Channing.

  No fewer than thirty-five people had tagged me with exclamations like, “Wait, what?!” and “Holy shit!” and “Did you know about this?!” (Of the other two, one was a picture from my mom, of a kitten inside a rain boot that said, “When life gives you rain, play in the puddles!” The other was an oh-so helpful notification that “Carter’s Rodeo Round-up!” was today.)

  I didn’t know which part was worse—that my ex-husband was dating a movie star, that he was doing it four paltry months after we signed divorce papers, that all his dreams were coming true…or that thirty-five of my friends and family decided it was necessary to point it out. The picture of the man who hadn’t kissed me for three years playing tonsil hockey with one of the most gorgeous women in the world was the bat and I was the dead horse.

  No, I decided as I gently closed the laptop I would much rather have thrown violently across the room. None of that was so bad. The worst part was that he’d been right—I really had been the one holding him back.

  Chapter 2

  “I wish you’d just delete those dumb things,” my mom said after I lashed out at yet another comment on a picture of Kyle with Serabella. “They’re not worth getting so upset over.”

  After ten days of constant chatter, jokes, surprise, anger, and shock from my extended circle of social media relations, I was ready to crawl into a hole and never come out again. Or maybe bury Kyle in a subterranean cave along with his Silhouette 67 perfume-promoting sexpot. Sexpot? God, I needed to get out of the house and away from my mom… “I can delete all the pictures and posts and tags, but they’ll just post more. Like this one. Oh, that’s so helpful, Marie, thanks.”